“Another one. This one smells of anger, not fear. Interesting.”

Behind them, the depths were silent.

And she told it. Not the happy parts. She told the gorge about the night her mother died—the beeping machines, the smell of antiseptic, the final, rattling breath. She described the silence in the car ride home, the way her father’s hands shook on the wheel. She described the hollow, gnawing week after, when she had to pretend to be fine for Theo’s sake, swallowing her own grief until it turned to stone in her gut.

“Why? He is in no pain. And I am so very hungry.”

Lena, at seventeen, was too old for such stories. She was also too stubborn to let fear dictate her path. Her little brother, Theo, had fallen down the steep, rocky slope two days ago while chasing a stray kite. The search party had found the kite, tangled in a thornbush, but not Theo. The village elder had declared him lost to the "Gorge's Grief," a mournful sigh that locals claimed rose from the crevice before a storm.

Lena didn't believe in grief. She believed in rope, a headlamp, and the fierce, burning love of an older sibling.

The gorge was a scar on the land, a deep, jagged cut through the emerald hills that surrounded the village of Oakhaven. Generations of locals had told their children not to go near it. They spoke of strange lights flickering in its depths at midnight, of a wind that seemed to whisper names it had no right to know.

The hum faltered. The polished walls of the chamber seemed to shudder. The voice, for the first time, sounded uncertain. “This is... not a bright memory. It is cold. It burns.”